By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, popularly known as BAT in Nigeria, once promised his compatriots that the country would not give in to the request of the US and France to allow them relocate their military bases to Nigeria. The military bases of the duo have been sacked from some African countries lately.
Earlier, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris had denied that the federal government was contemplating issuing out its land to the two countries for building their military bases in the country. The minister said with conviction that the Nigerian Federal Executive Council (FEC) had never discussed the issue because the government had not received the requests from the governments of the two countries.
It would be recalled that before the President and the minister gave the reassurances to their compatriots, some six northerners, five of them active professors working either in universities or in research centres in Nigeria, had written an open letter to the president and the leadership of the National Assembly (NASS) on the 1st of March 2024, urging them not to accede to the so called request of the US and France to allow them bring their military bases to Nigeria.
The six were Professors Attahiru Jega of BUK and a Chancellor at the University of Kano, a former Vice Chancellor and former INEC Chairman, Abubakar Siddique head of the Centre for Democratic Development, Research and Training (CEDDERT),Zaria, Jibrin Ibrahim head of the Centre For Democracy and Development (CDD), Abuja, and Kabiru Sulaiman Chafe head of the Arewa Research and Development Project (ARDP), Kaduna, as well as Auwal Musa (Rafsanjani) leader of the Civil Society for Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Y.Z. Ya’u of the Centre for Information Technology Development (CITAD), Kano.
Known for research works and publication of many peer review papers and articles in national and international journals, the professors must know what they were talking about when they wrote the open letter to the three most powerful people in the country.
The rumour had started in the north that US and France were allegedly making moves to bring their respective military bases to the area, a move that most people in the region perceive as not in the interest of the area or Nigeria as a whole. But as my fellow compatriots use to quip; ‘there is no smoke without fire’, hence the worry and concern in the north.
And now, the US is using 7.7 hectares of land to build what it calls ‘the biggest Consulate in the world,’ and it expects the work to be completed in 2027. The question to ask the Yankees is; why does the US need that vast area to build a mere Consulate in Nigeria, but more importantly, is Nigeria that important to the US to warrant getting the ‘biggest Consulate in the world’ built there?
According to the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard, who conducted news reporters around the completed part of the huge complex, “Nigeria is United State’s biggest trade partner in Africa. “
She added that “Nigeria plays a significant role in the economic relations between the United States and Africa, making it a key partner for trade and investment. The new Consulate being built in Lagos, Nigeria reflects the importance of the relationship between the two countries”. A very long tell, in the reckoning of every right thinking person.
But according to investigation, Nigeria ranks a dismal 58th among the US’s trade partners. There is, therefore, more to this long story than the rest of the world is being told by the United States, and whatever it is, must be very unsavoury to hear.
In any case, is the US telling the world that Nigeria is more important to her than the UK, or Israel, or Germany, or China, or India, or Saudi Arabia, or, or, ad infinitum? I have my doubts, because the US considers those countries closer to her than Nigeria in terms of good foreign relations. Yet, the American government did not deem it necessary to build ‘the biggest Consulate in the world’ in those countries.
Even in Africa, countries like Egypt and South Africa are diplomatically closer to the US than Nigeria.
I think it is nothing but a ploy to find a way, even if it is through the back door, to get the US’s military base into Nigeria, a desire it (the US) has been naturing for ages, but more so now, when along with France, its military bases were recently given the matching orders by some African countries to leave their lands.
Apart form the normal consul work undertaken there, it is a known fact that the US uses its Consulates in most countries to effect a so called regime change in the country whose leadership it considers as ‘unfriendly’. We are aware of the false alarm that the western powers raised over late Sadam of Iraq and the late Muamar Ghadafi of Libya.
The former (Iraqi President) was toppled from power because of the immense oil reserves in his country, and the fact that he became a thorn in the flesh of Israel. The Libyan late leader, who made sure that his people had almost everything free, was removed from office and killed by the same western powers led, as usual, by the US because he was a fan Africanist to the core who would rather see Africa utilise her own God given resources than for same to go to the West and return to Africa as imported finished products.
Under the trumped up charges against them, with the connivance of their fugitive fellow citizens who were living in the US, one of the two leaders was removed by the so called coalition of the western powers, led by the US, over his alleged ‘possession of the weapons of mass destruction’.
A lie, which the western world vehemently denied at the time and which cost the life of a scientist of renown and member of the investigation team, but was shamelessly admitted to be the truth by a one time British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair. Mr. Blair claimed that the West was misled by the investigators who told them that the late leader had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in his possession.
Muammar Ghaddafi, who was loved by his people, was alleged to be persecuting the same people for no reason whatsoever, which is of course a very convenient lie in order to justify his murder by the same coalition.
And the two countries know no peace ever since. In fact, the leaders of Israel allegedly once cried out that the region (Arab) was safer when Saddam Husaini was in power as the President of Iraq.
Recently, three US citizens were caught red handed in the attempted coup in Congo, and the infamous Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was fingered in the coup attempt. The CIA was involved in many cases of successful as well as failed coups around the world.
The usual hiding place for most of those who are geared toward toppling a regime is the consulate, which the CIA has made as a hiding place for some of its operatives who are on a sinister mission around the world. And the military base is used as a drilling and training place for such operatives.
It is my guess that France too, would soon have its own ‘consulate’ in the same Lagos, probably in the same area and, possibly the same proportion as the US. The two countries had their military bases recently sacked by some African countries because of the unnecessary interference in the internal affairs of the host nations by some of the staffers working there.
Something sinister is happening in their midst, but some fellow Nigerians, who still ‘worship’ and ape the western world, seeing in it a role model and idol of adulation’, would rather see everything wrong in whatever their ‘other and not so loved’ compatriots do, even if those others are only exercising their constitutional rights. Such rights as the liberty to practice their religion without fear of persecution or harassment from any quarters.
Some of them who claim to “also be Muslims”, however, do not see anything wrong with teaching small girls, regardless of their ages, ‘sex education’, part of which includes ‘how to abort unwanted pregnancy’, but saw ‘everything wrong’ in marrying off girls and women of ‘marriageable ages’ in a single ceremony, they derisively call ‘mass wedding’. Someone even went to the extent of going to the court to stop the weddings from taking place.
As far as they are concerned, nothing is wrong with the former, because it was ‘decreed’ by their ‘role model and idol of adulation, the western world, but everything ‘wrong’ with the latter, because it was decreed by God, the almighty Whom they can not see. For those opposed to the so called ‘mass wedding’, it was better to do the bidding of shaitan (anti christ) than to obey the commandments of Allah, Who watches on everybody and everything.
And those who follow the philosophy of the western world, particularly the US in regards to worldly accumulation of material things, such as ‘stupendous’ wealth, it is expected that they will be anything but helpful to the not so rich among their compatriots.
Malam Malumfashi wrote from Abuja.
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